


Lemon Trees and Flowers

by kirasometimes



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Falling In Love, M/M, Slow Burn, demisexual Nicky, mild but brief internalized homophobia, no one dies not even once idk is that weird here?, yearning Joe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-24
Updated: 2020-08-24
Packaged: 2021-03-06 15:34:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,417
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26081245
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kirasometimes/pseuds/kirasometimes
Summary: Yusuf is kissing him now and it takes Nicolo far too long to realize that he has not allowed himself to kiss Yusuf back.
Relationships: Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Comments: 31
Kudos: 409





	Lemon Trees and Flowers

**Author's Note:**

> As stated in the tags, there is some brief but mild internalized homophobia directed at Nicky by Nicky. It is resolved by the end and never expressed out loud.

Nicolo thinks of lemon trees and how Agnesia’s pale hair tickled his nose when she brushed her lips to his. They were each nine, nearing ten years old. With her, his first kiss was barely more than a summer breeze against a setting sun, too quick to truly be remembered except in the oddest of times. Another kiss was never shared again with his young friend for that kiss, born only of curiosity, was merely a kiss between children.

Yusuf is kissing him now as a man. 

It is not hurried; instead it is soft and gentle, much like Agnesia’s must have been, but there are unspoken words on Yusuf’s lips that Nicolo has never imagined in all of their time together. For this kiss, this man’s mouth against his, speaks of desire and emotion and all the unfathomable in between. 

And it takes Nicolo far too long to realize that he has not allowed himself to kiss Yusuf back. 

Yusuf withdraws and his head hangs low. His shoulders bow and in a swift movement, he stands and crosses to the other side of their fire. He lays on the sandy ground, his back turned from Nicolo and it is yet another moment far too long gone before Nicolo realizes he’s been left alone. 

His heart pounds in his chest as if making up for all the beats it has forgotten. 

The ghost of Yusuf’s kiss does not allow him to sleep. 

The next morning, Yusuf acts as if nothing has happened. They pack their meager belongings and continue in their travels. Going nowhere truly, but always moving through the world as they must. Immortality has many burdens and never truly having a home is but one of them. But together, they have been content these last seven years. At least, that is what Nicolo believed. Last night has called that into question. 

He does not doubt Yusuf’s friendship but now he wonders at the depths of it. He listens between the words Yusuf speaks as if he might hear something he had not before, a clue or meaning previously lost to Nicolo. There is fondness, of course. There is trust and ease. Quick wit and an ever present hint of full joy. Nothing Nicolo did not think was always there. 

The change comes at night when they stop to make camp. Yusuf does not sit as closely next to him as he normally does while Nicolo cooks. He is close, sure, but half a man could sit between them and Nicolo misses the weight of his knee against his own. 

A week passes this way and Nicolo knows very well that the change between them is his own fault. 

He just does not have the words to explain why. 

A few days later, in Cairo, they buy a room for the night as a sand storm brews on the horizon. It is a small thing with a small bed but there are thick blankets that feel like a blessing compared to how thin his own has gotten. His fingers tangle in the fabric and he thinks, unprompted, if he would also feel blessed if his hand were to tangle in Yusuf’s hair. 

He drops the corner he was holding as if it had burnt him. Yusuf is by his side immediately, dark eyes searching for whatever threat he had previously missed. Nicolo blushes in shame. 

They sleep together that night. It is the first night Nicolo realizes just how much sleep he has missed over the last ten days. 

He dreams of Yusuf. Or rather, he dreams of Isabella and how she would kiss him in the grass fields. Shy and sweet, like a flower. As teenagers, this was expected and many of his friends had wives. He was behind in terms of life, but he’d felt no such call to a marriage bed. This was a distinct memory of his; until it shifted and Yusuf stood before him instead, the dream taking over and leaving Nicolo overwhelmed as he’d never before been in all his life. 

His soul is stirred. No, shaken. 

He woke and was strangely upset. 

He’d always been different than most men he knew. His priestly vows had been easy to take as he’d never felt the temptation of flesh beyond unreasonable measures. He’d never seriously considered a wife, and never had imagined himself a man. That was a thought so far past his upbringing, his church, his beliefs, his own mind that he was left shaking with the sheer monumentality of it. 

There is blood under his fingernails when he woke again the next morning and unclenched his fists. But, he notes solemnly, he did not leave Yusuf’s bed. 

It is another three weeks before something changes between them again. Nicolo has gone to fill their canteens with water for the day’s journey. The stream is closer than he anticipated and he startles Yusuf with his return. 

There are tears in his friend’s eyes. 

Nicolo drops the canteens and water spills to the ground as he goes to Yusuf. There is no one else nearby, there is no blood or wound, nothing Nicolo can see that would answer for the salt on Yusuf’s face.

“I am well,” Yusuf says but Nicolo does not believe him. He cannot, not when Yusuf is obviously in distress. So Nicolo reaches out to him, takes his face between his hands and rests his forehead against Yusuf’s. 

His breath hitches in his chest. Nicolo knows what longing sounds like and he hears that in Yusuf’s sigh. He knows now that he has hurt him. A month ago, he’d wounded him and Nicolo had let Yusuf suffer alone all this time. 

“I am sorry,” Nicolo says. It sounds thick on his tongue. “Yusuf-”

“Nicolo, do not-”

“I don’t know how to,” he confesses to Yusuf hurriedly. All the words that have built up in his chest since he was first kissed under a lemon tree that he’s tried to use to explain his otherness come flooding out. “All my life, I’ve never known how to be with someone else. It is so natural for everyone but I cannot understand how to do what everyone does. I have never kissed anyone first. I have never wanted to. I have never touched anyone first. I have never lain with another. I am not meant to-”

He chokes, looking now at the ground as his own tears start to fall. He vaguely feels Yusuf’s hands wiping his cheeks, saying his name soothingly but he cannot look at the man in front of him. His hands fall to the ends of the scarf Yusuf wears and his fingers knot in the linen, little pains in his fists again. 

“I am not made for another person,” Nicolo says and he mourns the truth he has said out loud. He knows now that he would try. For Yusuf, he would try. 

“I am broken here,” he pounds his fists into his chest, into his heart, still clutching Yusuf’s scarf. “I cannot- you don’t deserve a broken man.”

“Nicolo,” Yusuf whispers and the adoration is too much for him to bear. So he tries. He really tries. 

He kisses Yusuf this time and he wills away the phantoms of his past to focus on the man that is in his presence. He has no idea if it is good or pleasant or enough but Yusuf lets him try. Holds him until his sob cannot be choked down and he must tear himself away. 

Yusuf lowers them to the ground, holding Nicolo as they settle. Until Nicolo calms. Until the absolute horror and humiliation begins to sink into Nicolo and he feels that he understands now why Yusuf had left him that night. 

“You are my most treasured friend,” Yusuf says softly, kindly. “You are not broken. You are in fact so whole that I must love you so that I may feel complete myself. I am selfish with my love where you are not. You give it too freely, Nicolo. I have seen it. You give it to every person we pass and meet. I wanted some for myself, that is all. And I am sorry.”

“I would give it,” Nicolo gasps, the desperation leaving him shaking once again. “If I knew how, I-”

“Be still, my friend,” Yusuf whispers in comfort. “Have peace.”

They do not leave that day as they intended. Instead they hold each other and talk. Nicolo tells Yusuf about Agnesia and Isabella and tries to make him understand. Yusuf tries his best. His questions spark many thoughts Nicolo has never had. No, he has not kissed another man and no, he can’t recall wanting to. His feelings towards both sexes are the same, he says, usually uncarnal in nature. The exception has truly only been Yusuf but even those thoughts are so tame they hardly seemed worth mentioning. 

There is something possessively amused in Yusuf’s smile by the end of the night when he has established that Nicolo has more feeling for him than any other being on earth. When they sleep that night, Yusuf holds him. Nicolo allows himself the chance to hold him back. 

Over the next few months, their connection to each other changes. They touch more, brushes of skin that could be seen from a distance as casual but they mean much more to Nicolo. And to Yusuf, whom Nicolo understands now expresses his affection by touch; Nicolo can appreciate this. And Yusuf understands Nicolo’s affections are most easily expressed by fetching water or cooking dinner or carrying the heavier of their packs for longer than his turn. Slowly, they are meeting in the middle of this divide. 

Yusuf kisses him, though he always requests Nicolo’s permission first. Nicolo does not deny him, finds that he actually cannot. He enjoys how it feels when Yusuf kisses him but he enjoys more how happy Yusuf is to do so. 

Some nights they kiss so long that Nicolo doesn’t stop. On those nights, he sometimes finds his hands slipping under Yusuf’s tunic to hear how he moans into Nicolo’s mouth. It alights something unfamiliar in him, but he never stops to think about it, not when Yusuf is under his touch. 

But sometimes he pushes Yusuf too far and he must leave Nicolo for a small time to relieve his temptation. He always comes back and kisses him softly and with reassurance. Still, Nicolo worries. It is not that he doesn’t feel pleasure when they are like this with each other. He still has a man’s body. It is just somehow slower. 

So it’s a surprise to him on the day when he’s the one who rises first. They are in a room this time and Yusuf has him on his back, their shirts lost in the sweltering heat. His broad thigh is between Nicolo’s legs and Nicolo feels himself start to grow between their bodies. 

“Yusuf,” he groans and it sounds lewd to him as Yusuf bites at his neck. “I feel-“

“I do as well,” Yusuf says, his mouth still buried in Nicolo’s skin. But then he pauses and lifts his weight so that he can look in Nicolo’s eyes. There is concern, a little hesitation. And something else he cannot quite place. 

“Do I need to stop?” Yusuf asks. 

Ah, Nicolo sees now. The something else is Yusuf’s battle between his needs and what how he expects Nicolo to need. How they do not always align. 

“No,” Nicolo hears himself say, smiling a little at the surprise in Yusuf’s face. “You don’t need to stop.”

So he doesn’t, not until they’re both in need of a wash. They instead fall asleep and the heat dries them until they are sticky with each other. 

It is perhaps just over a year since Nicolo cried in the desert that he finally feels exactly what Yusuf has tried to explain to him. Want but mixed with a need so deep that it fills the mind and knocks at the heart. Want and need that tear through his blood and pricks at his skin. He blushes and pants and whines and pleads but it’s all in his head; Yusuf is not touching him at all but Nicolo feels that he has to. That he must and that it must be now. 

Nicolo kisses him. He has before, knowing when Yusuf needed the physical expression. But he kisses Yusuf for his own pleasure this time. For his own want and need and for the way Yusuf kisses him back. Nicolo knows that God did not make a broken man after all, just a man who was meant to know only one touch, only one kiss. 

His shivers with this revelation, overcome. 

“Yusuf, you must know,” he says as they fall to their knees together, “that I understand now.”

“Nicolo, you do not have to say anything,” Yusuf breaths and he sounds almost terrified. But Nicolo is no longer afraid and he knows, oh Lord he knows now, exactly what has befallen the pair of them. 

“But I do,” Nicolo says, their foreheads touching and his hands on Yusuf’s face as Yusuf’s are at the back of his neck. “I do, Yusuf. I understand who I am with you and how I am to remain myself. I understand now that I have never been myself at all, only yours.”

Yusuf lets out a happy sob. 

“I am yours,” Nicolo repeats. “I have always been yours.”

“And I yours, my love,” Yusuf gasps and the admission fills Nicolo with warmth. Because it is love and Yusuf is his love and it is more than Nicolo ever dreamed. 

“My love,” Nicolo echoes and they laugh and cry together, finally feeling as if all the broken pieces have worn away their sharp edges so they they can now rest easily together. 

Yusuf shows him all the things their bodies can do together and it is more pleasure than Nicolo has ever known. It fills him until he cannot contain it and Yusuf is there to coax him back until they can know each other again. Then again. 

He lays next to this man, this love he has found, and he refuses to close his eyes until he is sure Yusuf has fallen asleep first. Then he traces his lips, the shell of his ear, the slant of his neck. 

He is more beautiful than lemon trees and shy flowers and he is his.


End file.
